rails-devel — List for discussion of Rails development

Re: [Rails-devel] Game Options

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

> This is exactly the kind of "bad pop-up" that I was talking about a
> couple of weeks ago.
> 
> This needs to somehow be a part of the Options UI. Deciding whether to
> have an optional 6 train is not a question that's important enough to
> merit interrupting the start of a game.
> 
> There are a couple of ways we can go about this:
> 
> 1. A new section (JPanel) is added to the existing Options dialog, and
> shows any available variants, and is not visible if no variants are
> found.

This is about what happens, except that (1) the original contents of that
window have been removed 
(the alternative being to disable everything before adding the new stuff)
and (2) it is moved 200x200 pixels to make it somewhat better accessible.
And, yes, it is briefly out of sight.
It should be easy to tweak it your way - go ahead, I would say.

> 2. A new button on the Options dialog that then pops up the variant
> selector dialog.

That button already exists: it is the New Game button.

> 3. Some other idea that's not immediately apparent to me.

[Rails-devel] New ClassLoader

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

I've just committed some fairly big changes.

I've pulled in the custom Class Loader from Colossus, and then tweaked
it a bunch.

This begins to clear up a bunch of problems I've been having getting
Rails to run under JNLP. These problems are mainly our depending on
using the local file system. While I'm not quite done yet, this is
certainly a step in the right direction.

Additionally, I've deprecated the Util.getStreamFromFile() method.
Please use ResourceLoader.getInputStream() instead.

For now, I've updated the relevant areas to use the new method signature
so that things still compile and function. Next, I'll be removing some
of the redundancy this new class creates.

Lastly, thanks to the addition of the game.properties file, I've removed
reading the local file system to build the game list.

 ---Brett.


 Robot Nite - Designated device drivers drink free 

Re: [Rails-devel] Game Options

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 23:28 +0200, Erik Vos wrote:
> If a game has any <GameOption> tags, a dialog window will appear to
> let the user make the necessary selections (in fact I have reused the
> Options window). 
> The window contents are automatically generated from all found <GameOption>
> tags.

> Erik Vos


This is exactly the kind of "bad pop-up" that I was talking about a
couple of weeks ago.

This needs to somehow be a part of the Options UI. Deciding whether to
have an optional 6 train is not a question that's important enough to
merit interrupting the start of a game.

There are a couple of ways we can go about this:

1. A new section (JPanel) is added to the existing Options dialog, and
shows any available variants, and is not visible if no variants are
found.

2. A new button on the Options dialog that then pops up the variant
selector dialog.

3. Some other idea that's not immediately apparent to me.



 ---Brett.


Of course he was all in favour of Armageddon in *general* terms.
        -- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Re: [Rails-devel] Game Options

[John D. G. <jd...@di...>]

Erik Vos wrote:
> I have committed code to implement a generic Game Options feature.
> See the example in 1830/Game.xml, where it is used to allow the 
> optional 3rd 6-train. 1830/Game.xml has some comments about the
> usage of the new <GameOption> tag.

I hope you will also enable the most important option omitted from AH's
computer 1830 - unlimited diesels (which Bromley said should be standard).

[Rails-devel] Game Options

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

I have committed code to implement a generic Game Options feature.
See the example in 1830/Game.xml, where it is used to allow the 
optional 3rd 6-train. 1830/Game.xml has some comments about the
usage of the new <GameOption> tag.

The existing <Variant> tag (1835) has been replaced by <GameOption> as well.

If a game has any <GameOption> tags, a dialog window will appear to
let the user make the necessary selections (in fact I have reused the
Options window). 
The window contents are automatically generated from all found <GameOption>
tags.

Currently two selection objects can be shown:
- a dropdown list (the default), or
- a checkbox (if a 'type="toggle"' attribute exists in that GameOption).

I have not made any special attempts to make the window look nice,
but it does the job.

The presence in one XML file (Game.xml) of the specification of 
the available game options, and the consumption of their user-assigned
values,
required a split of the game initialisation code in the classes Options  
and GameManager. Now first the GameManager component is parsed,
then the popup is shown, and finally the other components are parsed.

This structure will in a later stage be refactored to fit into the
pattern for all user actions (where PossibleAction objects 
are exchanged between the client and the server part).
But I am a bit tired of that subject now....

The save file structure has changed to contain the game options list.
I have also added a version number to the code and the save files. 
Save files with a different version number than would be created
by the current code are considered incompatible.
So you can throw away any existing save files after you have loaded this
code.

The version number should not change that often, but this time it does....

Erik Vos

Re: [Rails-devel] Variants and game options

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

> On 7/29/07, Erik Vos <eri...@hc...> wrote:
> > We could define the toggle itself like
> >         <Option name="WithOptional6Train" default="no"/>
> > which would let the UI show a popup after game selection,
> > but how can we refer to such toggles in the rest of the XML?
> >
> > Any comments or better proposals?
> >
> 
> 
> I think the toggle should start with a top-level <variant> tag. This
> would allow you to parse the variants specifically and also separates
> the variant-specific options from the options for the main game.

OK, indeed we could have variant-specific toggles, 
although I think that would be pretty exceptional.
That means, that we could also have nested <IfVariant>
and <IfOption> nodes, so the parsing of that part would be recursive.
But that is OK for a generic construct.

Erik. 

Re: [Rails-devel] Variants and game options

[brett l. <wak...@gm...>]

On 7/29/07, Erik Vos <eri...@hc...> wrote:
> We could define the toggle itself like
>         <Option name="WithOptional6Train" default="no"/>
> which would let the UI show a popup after game selection,
> but how can we refer to such toggles in the rest of the XML?
>
> Any comments or better proposals?
>


I think the toggle should start with a top-level <variant> tag. This
would allow you to parse the variants specifically and also separates
the variant-specific options from the options for the main game.


---Brett

[Rails-devel] Variants and game options

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

> Sounds like we will also need a game type selector during startup, so
> that we can toggle between these behaviors.

This is a general subject that we have to face one day, so why not now.

We already have a generic variant selection mechanism (see 1835/Game.xml),
but currently all it does is assigning a string value to a variable, 
leaving it to the code to interpret that value.

Unboubtedly we will also need toggles which can be set 
independently of each other.

Let's start with a simple case: the 1830 optional 6-train, 
which we have not implemented yet (leaving it to the user 
to change the value in Game.xml if so wanted).

I think we need a generic mechanism to make values that are 
explicitly assigned in the XML dependent on variant and toggle settings.

We could define the toggle itself like
	<Option name="WithOptional6Train" default="no"/>
which would let the UI show a popup after game selection,
but how can we refer to such toggles in the rest of the XML?

For the 6-trains we now have
	<Train name="6" majorStops="6" cost="630" amount="2" startPhase="6" 
		rustedTrain="3" releasedTrain="D"/>
This is actually kind of a shorthand for a nested structure like
	<Train>
		<Name>6</Name>
		<MajorStops>6</MajorStops>
		... etc.
	</Train>
which I tend to avoid because it is more verbose and needs a little bit
more code to parse.

The latter structure would be easier to adapt to toggles, though, e.g. like
	<Train>
		...
		<Amount option="WithOptional6Train" value="yes">3</Amount>
		<Amount option="WithOptional6Train" value="no">2</Amount>
		... etc.
	</Train>

For this project I am rather thinking of a way to configure 
and code such exceptions that retains the current XML structure.
Proposal:
    <Train name="6" majorStops="6" cost="630" startPhase="6" 
		rustedTrain="3" releasedTrain="D">
        <IfOption name="WithOptional6Train" value="yes">
		<Attribute amount="3"/>
	  </IfOption>
	  <IfOption name="WithOptional6Train" value="no">
		<Attribute amount="2"/>
	  </IfOption>
    </Train>
and for Variant-dependent values we could similarly have
        <IfVariant name="Standard">
		<Attribute .../>
	  </IfVariant>

This would give us a generic way to code conditional values.

I could then write a common utility method that would take
any DOM (parsed XML) element, like <Train> in the above case, 
and return a map with all its contained attributes 
(including those contained in inner Attribute nodes), 
taking variants and all game options into account.

This approach would even simplify the current XML parsing code 
(which is bulky enough as it is).
Any other nested elements must of course still be decoded explicitly.

Any comments or better proposals?

You'll understand that my main consideration is conciseness
of the XML parsing code. 

Erik.

Re: [Rails-devel] M&H/NYC swap thoughts

[John A. T. <ja...@ja...>]

Erik Vos wrote:
> Do any examples come to mind?
>   
The FO mountain railway private in 1844 may be closed at any point, 
instantly placing the associated special tiles and giving the owner 
$80.  I am sure there are others I have run into, but I can't think of 
them off the top of my head right now.

-- 
John A. Tamplin					ja...@ja...
770/436-5387 HOME				4116 Manson Ave
                		 		Smyrna, GA  30082-3723

[Rails-devel] Playability comments in game list

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

I have added a new config file called games.properties,
in which the available games are listed with comments
about the status of each one.

The file contains a short comment (Note) and a long one (Description).
The Note is added to the game name in the dropdown (it must be separated
by at least one space - the game name is retrieved by truncation at the
first space).
The Description is too long to fit there, and was intended to appear as a
tooltip,
but that does not work. 

(To make the tooltip, I changed the text into a JLabel, 
subclassed to have toString() return the label text,
and put the description as a tooltip into that label.
It seems the JComboBox suppresses the tooltips of its components).

Unless someone finds a way to use the Description text, 
it could stay as a comment in the config file.

Erik Vos

Re: [Rails-devel] M&H/NYC swap thoughts

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

> > To implement it strictly according to the rules would mean,
> > that the M&H owner would get a turn at each and every player/company
> > turn change, in which the swap must be done or denied.
> 
> You are going to find that other games have similar constructs, so it 
> might as well get solved now.

Do any examples come to mind?

The only comparable case I could find is the C&A private in 18EC,
(which can be exchanged against a PRR share), but the rules 
do not say anything about *when* that privilege may be executed,
so I would not count this one.

Other player actions may have this in-between-other-player-turns
property, but I can't remember any real examples right now.
 
> > In hotseat and moderator play it would not be a problem:
> > it would be just an extra allowed action (signalled
> > by highlighting the Special menu). The fact that it would
> > be executed by another than the current player is not a 
> problem here.
> >
> > But in internet play I don't see how we can implement this
> > smoothly. Giving one player a turn in between all other turns
> > would be pretty annoying, and slow down the game
> > for an action that is almost never taken at all.
> 
> I think the way the timing is handled in Cosmic Encounter 
> would work here. 
> Basically, you let things go on as usual and the player with 
> the option to 
> do some action at any point or any set of points may backup 
> one action to 
> intervene with their action.  The undo facility makes that 
> easy, and you 
> just have to put in a limit of how far back they can go to 
> their action 
> point.

Sounds doable.

Erik.

Re: [Rails-devel] M&H/NYC swap thoughts

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

On Fri, 2007-07-27 at 18:56 -0400, John A. Tamplin wrote:
> > But in internet play I don't see how we can implement this
> > smoothly. Giving one player a turn in between all other turns
> > would be pretty annoying, and slow down the game
> > for an action that is almost never taken at all.
> 
> I think the way the timing is handled in Cosmic Encounter would work here. 
> Basically, you let things go on as usual and the player with the option to 
> do some action at any point or any set of points may backup one action to 
> intervene with their action.  The undo facility makes that easy, and you 
> just have to put in a limit of how far back they can go to their action 
> point.
> 

I like that solution.

For hotseat play, we can just simply have the exchange option available
at all times.

For PBEM and Internet play, we have the exchange button available and
when selected, it undoes the last action, then performs the exchange.

Sounds like we will also need a game type selector during startup, so
that we can toggle between these behaviors.


 ---Brett.


'It must have been Fate that brought you here,' said Twoflower.
'Yes, it's the sort of thing he likes to do,' said Rincewind.
(Interesting Times)

Re: [Rails-devel] M&H/NYC swap thoughts

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

On Sat, 2007-07-28 at 00:44 +0200, Erik Vos wrote:
> So I would propose to make a choice, at least for internet play,
> between two options:
> - either ignore the in-between-turn option for the M&H swap, or
> - always allow it (so the M&H owner can always do the swap
> without explicitly having a turn). 
> 
> I would prefer to leave the matter as it is, i.e. to ignore the 
> in-between-turns part of the rule.
> 
> Any comments?
> 
> Erik Vos


I can see two scenarios that makes this rule important. One is in the
case of there only being one share of NYC left available. The holder of
the M&H can use this ability to effectively steal the share from a
potential buyer. The other is the rare circumstance that this could
trigger is the transfer of presidency of the NYC.

I personally think that this is such a rare occurrence that it's not
worth spending a lot of time on. I'm happy to leave this as-is and only
allow the transfer on the owning player's turn.

We should probably publish a document of known differences in our
implementation of the rules just to keep track of minutiae like this.


 ---Brett.


No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
eating one peanut.
		-- Channing Pollock

Re: [Rails-devel] M&H/NYC swap thoughts

[John A. T. <ja...@ja...>]

On Sat, 28 Jul 2007, Erik Vos wrote:

> We have so far ignored the latter part of this rule.
> My question is: should we do something about it?
> Is it worth while?
> The only sensible reason I can think of doing this in an OR
> would be that a player would want to hold on the M&H,
> and swap it just before the first 5-train is bought.
> Has anyone ever done that or seen it being done?

If you intend to exchange it rather than buy it in, you are better off 
doing it just before the NYC runs so you get the revenue from the private 
and from the share you excahnge it for.  the only other time I could see 
it mattering would be if the president has to sell shares to finance a 
train (unlikely but possible before a 5 is bought), then stealing the 
company right after he has bought a train for it when you might not have 
favorable priority position.

> To implement it strictly according to the rules would mean,
> that the M&H owner would get a turn at each and every player/company
> turn change, in which the swap must be done or denied.

You are going to find that other games have similar constructs, so it 
might as well get solved now.

> In hotseat and moderator play it would not be a problem:
> it would be just an extra allowed action (signalled
> by highlighting the Special menu). The fact that it would
> be executed by another than the current player is not a problem here.
>
> But in internet play I don't see how we can implement this
> smoothly. Giving one player a turn in between all other turns
> would be pretty annoying, and slow down the game
> for an action that is almost never taken at all.

I think the way the timing is handled in Cosmic Encounter would work here. 
Basically, you let things go on as usual and the player with the option to 
do some action at any point or any set of points may backup one action to 
intervene with their action.  The undo facility makes that easy, and you 
just have to put in a limit of how far back they can go to their action 
point.

-- 
John A. Tamplin					ja...@ja...
770/436-5387 HOME				4116 Manson Ave
                 		 		Smyrna, GA  30082-3723

[Rails-devel] M&H/NYC swap thoughts

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

There is yet another aspect of the M&H/NYC swap in 1830 that we
have not implemented entirely according to the rules,
but for that aspect it is not so easy to see how to fix it.
Perhaps we can better not fix it at all.

The rules say, that the M&H/NYC share swap is allowed
- during the player's turn of a Stock Round, or
- between the turns of other players or Railroads in either
Stock or Operating Rounds.

We have so far ignored the latter part of this rule.
My question is: should we do something about it?
Is it worth while? 
The only sensible reason I can think of doing this in an OR
would be that a player would want to hold on the M&H, 
and swap it just before the first 5-train is bought. 
Has anyone ever done that or seen it being done?


To implement it strictly according to the rules would mean,
that the M&H owner would get a turn at each and every player/company
turn change, in which the swap must be done or denied.

In hotseat and moderator play it would not be a problem:
it would be just an extra allowed action (signalled
by highlighting the Special menu). The fact that it would
be executed by another than the current player is not a problem here.

But in internet play I don't see how we can implement this 
smoothly. Giving one player a turn in between all other turns 
would be pretty annoying, and slow down the game
for an action that is almost never taken at all.

So I would propose to make a choice, at least for internet play,
between two options:
- either ignore the in-between-turn option for the M&H swap, or
- always allow it (so the M&H owner can always do the swap
without explicitly having a turn). 

I would prefer to leave the matter as it is, i.e. to ignore the 
in-between-turns part of the rule.

Any comments?

Erik Vos

[Rails-devel] Fixes, M&H/NYC swap

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

In addition to a few more bug fixes, I have corrected
the 1830 M&H/NYC swap so that it is now Undo/Redo/Save/Loadable.

The old code assumed, that this swap was only allowed from the green phase.
I checked the rules again and found nothing supporting that restriction,
so I have now made this swap possible in the yellow phase too.

The UI for this swap has changed according to the result of a discussion
that we have had long ago. The M&H button has been removed.
The Status window now has a new menu item "Special", that is normally greyed
out.
If, during a Stock Round, the player having the turn owns the M&H, 
the Special menu is activated and gets a menu item added to execute the
swap. 
To even more highlight the fact that a special action is possible, 
the background of the "Special" menu turns orange, in line
with the colour code for activated screen fields.

I'm not sure if this Special menu can and should also appear 
in the OR window for tile and token laying. It would 
certainly help notifying the current player that a special action
is possible, although the red prompt text also does that pretty well IMO.

There is more to say about the M&H, but I will do that in a separate post.

Erik.

[Rails-devel] Webpage updated

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

The hosted page at http://rails.sourceforge.net/ has gotten some needed
updates.

The information is still fairly limited, but is significantly better
than what was there. Included in the update are some screenshots.

I think the next thing I'll try to get working is a JNLP version of the
game. 

 ---Brett.


Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
		-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

[Rails-devel] Rails 1.0.3 released!

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

I'm pleased to announce the release of version 1.0.3 of Rails.

There are many changes included in this release. Here are some of the
release highlights:

* Added logging using Log4j
* Added SVG tiles
* Added Batik library for working with SVG tiles
* Added Undo/Redo for nearly all other game phases.
* Significantly improved Undo/Redo granularity.
* Added several keyboard shortcuts for menu items
* Improved several UI elements.


To download, head over to http://sourceforge.net/projects/rails


-- 
Brett Lentz <wak...@gm...>

[Rails-devel] Small updates

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

I've committed a few small changes.

There was a typo in StatusWindow that was not setting the mnemonics
correctly.

I've centralized the Jar filename convention into Game, right alongside
the version constant. I've also made the filename all lowercase ('rails'
instead of 'Rails'), which should only affect people on *nix systems.

After a few more test builds, I should have a release package soon.

 ---Brett.


"Wish not to seem, but to be, the best."
-- Aeschylus

Re: [Rails-devel] Building a Jar file for 1.0.3

[Mirko B. <er...@ho...>]

Hi,

I think the most common solution for this is for the release to be a zip/tar
file with rails jar and startup scripts  in bin but also a lib directory
that contains 3rd party jars. In my opinion that is a good way to deploy a
java app. 

/Mirko

-----Original Message-----
From: rai...@li...
[mailto:rai...@li...] On Behalf Of Brett Lentz
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 3:54 PM
To: Development list for Rails: an 18xx game
Subject: [Rails-devel] Building a Jar file for 1.0.3

I've figured out how to build a working JAR for the next release.

However, there's a problem.

Out of the box, java doesn't handle JARs inside a JAR.  So, our
additional libraries must be kept outside of the rails JAR in order for
rails to locate the jars.

There are a couple of options for creating standalone JARs:
http://classworlds.codehaus.org/uberjar.html

We can either roll our own, or look at using a build system like Ant or
Maven to build our Jar.

Or, we can work on improving loading external jars, and simply ship a
zipfile or tarball that includes launcher scripts.


Does anyone have a preference for which direction to go?


 ---Brett.


One good thing about music,
Well, it helps you feel no pain.
So hit me with music;
Hit me with music now.
		-- Bob Marley, "Trenchtown Rock"


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[Rails-devel] Building a Jar file for 1.0.3

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

I've figured out how to build a working JAR for the next release.

However, there's a problem.

Out of the box, java doesn't handle JARs inside a JAR.  So, our
additional libraries must be kept outside of the rails JAR in order for
rails to locate the jars.

There are a couple of options for creating standalone JARs:
http://classworlds.codehaus.org/uberjar.html

We can either roll our own, or look at using a build system like Ant or
Maven to build our Jar.

Or, we can work on improving loading external jars, and simply ship a
zipfile or tarball that includes launcher scripts.


Does anyone have a preference for which direction to go?


 ---Brett.


One good thing about music,
Well, it helps you feel no pain.
So hit me with music;
Hit me with music now.
		-- Bob Marley, "Trenchtown Rock"

[Rails-devel] GIF Tile sizing fixed

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

I've fixed GIF tile sizing.

Looks like the "height" and "width" instance variables in ImageLoader
were being used by the BufferedImage object despite never being used to
set the GIF tile's height and width.

Renaming these variables fixed this bug.

Hooray for easy fixes.

 ---Brett.


The decision doesn't have to be logical; it was unanimous.

Re: [Rails-devel] Slightly improved error handling

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

Very good.

In the meantime I have fixed a few more bugs related to
Load not exactly doing the right thing sometimes.

I just found one bug that I may or may not be able to fix soon:
the M&H/NYC swap is not undoable yet, and will not be restored
on a reload. This rare action has escaped my attention so far.
The fix will be part of a more generic approach to special properties,
so I will not hurry this one.

Erik.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rai...@li... 
> [mailto:rai...@li...] On Behalf 
> Of Brett Lentz
> Sent: Wednesday 25 July 2007 21:42
> To: Development list for Rails: an 18xx game
> Subject: [Rails-devel] Slightly improved error handling
> 
> I've tweaked the exception handling during property file loading just
> slightly.
>         
> Now, even if we can't find my.properties or LocalisedText, 
> the game will
> still run. It will throw a ton of errors to System.err, but 
> it'll still
> function.
> 
>  ---Brett.
> 
> 
> "Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words."
> (Small Gods)
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
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> _______________________________________________
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> 

[Rails-devel] Slightly improved error handling

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

I've tweaked the exception handling during property file loading just
slightly.
        
Now, even if we can't find my.properties or LocalisedText, the game will
still run. It will throw a ton of errors to System.err, but it'll still
function.

 ---Brett.


"Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words."
(Small Gods)

[Rails-devel] Bugs

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

Found and fixed two bugs introduced by the recent updates.

Erik Vos